What is FIRST?

FIRST is a non-profit organization that stands for For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology. It tries to promote and encourage STEM education for students from kindergarden to grade 12. At the elementry and middle school level, FIRST has a program called FIRST Lego League (FLL) where students build and program robots out of Lego. At the high school level, they have a program called FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) which gives teenagers the experience of building, programming, modelling and designing a robot from scratch. R3P2 is an FRC team. Another remarkable program is FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) which enables a small group of middle and high school students in solving engineering problems. Each program is based on a challenge released by FIRST at the beginning of their season. After, teams have a specific amount of time to build, program and test their creations before attending competitions against other teams.

FIRST Principles

FIRST aims to not only provide amazing experiences for students in STEM, but to also integrate and teach lessons that students will likely use in their futures when working on a project with a team. It's main principles are Gracious Professionalism and Co-opertition which means that members of all teams should act graciously and professionally with other members of FIRST as well as provide help and support to other teams when possible despite the fact that you may be competing against them. By doing this, the community in FIRST is built upon collaboration and kindness and hopes that students will take these important morals with them in their future endeavors.

FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC)

On the first Saturday of every year, FIRST releases a challenge to all FRC teams based on a specific theme. After that, teams have six weeks to design, build and program their robot to be able to complete the tasks in the challenge. Later, the teams compete against one another in alliances - groups of 3 teams - in competitions. During competition season in Ontario, all teams must compete in 2 regional competitions. In these regional events teams gain points from how they place in qualification rounds and playoff matches. After, the highest achieving teams which have the most points are invited to go to Mississauga for the Ontario District Championships.In our 2018 season, we attended the Ryerson Regional, North Bay Regional and were fortunate enough to make it to District Championships in Mississauga. Learn more about our team's journey here .